Genres of the Atlantic
In his seminal work, Poetics of Relation (1990), Édouard Glissant posited the term “commonplace” as a means to rethink the role of genre in a transatlantic frame. Taking as its object the "flood of convergences, publishing itself in the guise of the commonplace,” this formulation complicates any attempt to read genre as a closed system of inherited traits. Rather, the notion of the commonplace draws our attention to the unspoken norms that sustain literary communities across time and space. Positive in Glissant’s account, commonplaces have also worked to police the boundaries of what counts as literature and who is counted within its canons of literary value.